The Scholarship of Engagement

"The scholarship of engagement means connecting the rich resources of the university to our most pressing social, civic and ethical problems, to our children, to our schools, to our teachers and to our cities..."

- Ernest Boyer in The Scholarship of Engagement

Ernest Boyer’s seminal work, Scholarship Reconsidered (1991), challenged higher education institutions to embrace the broader scope of academic work, moving beyond the traditional tripartite faculty role of teaching, research, and service, and an overly narrow definition of research as the only legitimate avenue to further knowledge. He proposed four interrelated dimensions of scholarship:  discovery, integration, application and teaching. Subsequently, Boyer expanded his definition to include the scholarship of engagement, in which scholars participate in "creating a special climate in which the academic and civic cultures communicate more continuously and creatively with each other" (Boyer, 1996).

The intention of engaged scholarship is that academic research and the community remain in dialogue, so that the work of scholars is more directly applied to the challenges of the cultural context in which they are embedded, and civic application may then feed back into the advancement of research.

Often referred to as "community-engaged scholarship", the scholarship of engagement applies an integrative approach to the traditional domains of research, teaching, and service. Where university connections with community partners generally fit under the category of outreach, engaged scholarship instead calls on us to develop mutual partnerships, in which university and community partners collaborate to solve problems and advance scholarship. 

As illustrated in Figure 1, approaches such as community-based participatory research (e.g. that sponsored by Loyola’s Center for Urban Research and Learning [CURL]) and service-learning represent types of community-engaged scholarship that are consistent with the missions of research, teaching and service.

Source: Kellogg Commission on Community-Engaged Scholarship in Health Professions, 2005

"As more faculty are including engagement in their scholarly work, questions about how to best evaluate the quality of engaged scholarship have come to the fore."

- Blanchard & Furco, Faculty Engaged Scholarship

If we are to take engaged scholarship seriously, we must develop a framework which determines how it can be determine standards and criteria under which it can be evauluated, especially for purposes like promotion and tenure. Blanchard & Furco (2021) present such a framework, under which engaged scholarship is divided into different categories and linked to foundational principles and desired outcomes.

A graphic outlining the framework for engaged scholarship discussed in detail in Blanchard & Furco, 2021.

For additional reading:

Community-Engaged Scholarship in the Academy: An Action Agenda (PDF)

Click on this Link to know: 

What Is Engaged Scholarship?: A Resource Collection

A curated collection of readings and resources that provide definitions, models, and examples of engaged scholarship.

Scholars interested in participating in engaged scholarship may consider the following resources for information on journals, organizations, and book publishers interested in engaged scholarship, as well as general advice on publishing service-learning and community-engaged scholarship. 

Campus Compact - Publishing Engaged Scholarship

ECU Office of Community Engagement and Research - Community Engaged Scholarship Resources

Engagement Scholarship Consortium

Campus Compact

Coalition for Urban and Metropolitan Universities

Community-Based Learning Professional Organizations

Engagement Scholarship Consortium

International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement

Society for Experiential Education